with skype's demise on the horizon, there's bound be an influx of potential converts. I may have a client that I'm looking into switching over, for super-selfish reasons - I don't want to endure the torture called Teams and I'd like to spare those people the same.

I run a selfhosted matrix instance, so I don't think there's gonna be an issue with installing one for them. however I haven't got experience with something they need often - screen sharing, both in 1-on-1 and group chats.

does it work for you, were there issues? what server do you use, selfhosted or matrix.org? thanks

watched it at least 10 times, good performances all around, tight direction with very few missteps. this thing would be at home in the melville universe.

there's a sequel out but a) ain't available in the fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck places and b) I'm hesitant to watch it, I'm fearful it'll spoil the original.

so my Fedora installation was upgraded in place from 35 onward, survived three SSD upgrades (all glory to btrfs send | receive), got switched to systemd-boot, then from Gnome to Plasma, so there's some junk hanging about.

one of those is my flatpak setup that's system-wide, as was the style at the time, instead of the current user-level. although everything works, there are enough irritants (like forcing crappy electron apps to use wayland) that the old way is just a chore now. so, here's my brief write-up on how I made the switch.

flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo  
/flathub.flatpakrepo

flatpak list --system --columns=application > system_flatpaks

edit the list by removing various org.kde., org.gtk., org.freedesktop., etc. runtimes and save it as e.g. flatpak_apps. otherwise, the following install and remove processes will ask tons of questions as to versions and nobody got time for that; the unused runtimes will be autoremoved later.

flatpak install --user $(cat flatpak_apps)

after it's done, time to pull the dependencies; no idea why they don't get pulled in the first place, when installing? anyhoo:

flatpak --user upgrade

will pull everything that's needed. thanks to the glory of btrfs deduping, this won't take up any additional space as it's already on the disk. to remove the system apps:

flatpak remove --system $(cat flatpak_apps)

after it's done, the runtimes:

flatpak remove --system --unused

and finally list all the system repos and remove them:

flatpak remotes --system

flatpak remote-del --system {flathub,flathub-beta,fedora-testing}

all app data remains safe and untouched in ~/.var/app, everything works as before and no reboots necessary. from this point forward, it's not neccessary to include the --user switch.

bonus content: if you haven't set up flatpak autoupdate, fix that post-haste.

~/.config/systemd/user/flatpak-autoupdate.service

[Unit]
Description=Update user Flatpaks  
  
[Service]  
Type=oneshot  
ExecStart=/usr/bin/flatpak update --assumeyes --noninteractive  
  
[Install]  
WantedBy=default.target

~/.config/systemd/user/flatpak-autoupdate.timer

[Unit]  
Description=Update user Flatpaks daily  
  
[Timer]  
OnCalendar=daily  
Persistent=true  
  
[Install]  
WantedBy=timers.target

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now flatpak-autoupdate.timer

hiya!

I got a cheap LED strip with PSU, controller, and IR remote. I didn't look at it too much, figured it would be easy to stick it under my kitchen cabinets.

however, this thing blinks and fades and whatnot and I'm supposed to switch it over to constant light by repeatedly pressing the remote, which a) works shitty and also b) don't wanna do that. I just want to plug it into power and it lights up and that's the end of our interaction.

so, I opened up the PSU/controller and I'd like to locate the spots that give me +12V and GND and I can bypass the whole blinky fadey mess.

it's a single-sided PCB. the top three wires on the right are for the IR receiver, ignore 'em. the bottom 4 are R, G, B, 12 V, respectively. I'm shorting RGB as it's a white-only strip.

can you hazard a guess where I'm most likely to succeed?

not really "build" a PC, more "upgrade" but I guess people here might know relevant stuff.

anyhow, I'd like to upgrade storage and get a 2 TB drive. in the $100-region I have these models available:

• ADATA Legend 710 ALEG-710-2TCS
• ADATA Legend 800 ALEG-800-2000GCS
• Crucial P3 CT2000P3SSD8
• KINGSTON SNV2S/2000G
• KINGSTON SNV3S/2000G
• Lexar LNM620 LNM620X002T-RNNNG
• Seagate BarraCuda Q5 ZP2000CV3A001
• Seagate BarraCuda ZP2000CV3A002

I imagine they're all bottom of the barrel type of deal, no DRAM cache, QLC, etc., but this would be my third drive of such variety (500 GB and 1 TB previous) and I had no issues daily driving 'em, linux with btrfs with HMB support.

so, before I start researching them all one-by-one, does one of these stand out as way better? the target hardware is AMD Ryzen 5 5600 on a B450 board. thanks!

edit: so, I got the data for the models from here and here's an image of the result (can I post tables in markdown?)

just as I though, no DRAM on either of those.

so, I have a couple of Flatpak electron apps that need to be coerced into running under Wayland (Element, Freetube, etc.). they run fine with Xwayland, but I need xlsclients (show Xwayland apps) output to be empty for unrelated reasons. so what I'm doing is:

1. determining where the .desktop file is, by way of right-clicking app in the Application Launcher, Edit Application, etc.
2. reconstructing where the file actually is, as I usually get a symlink
3. copying the file to ~/.local/share/applications/
4. editing the file to add --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform,WebRTCPipeWireCapturer --ozone-platform=wayland or whatever its case may be

that's it, Plasma picks up the change almost instantly.

this seems super-convoluted, is there a better way?

this may be old news to y'all, but I've discovered this freakin' thing: https://downloads.fcmodding.com/fc5/. it's a moding tool that allows various upgrades to the standard Far Cry experience. there's a linux version which works wonderfully - point it to the FarCry.exe and it does its thing!

in addition to the tool, there's the Resistance mod with tons of tweaks. for me, the most important one was lowering the rewards so I have to finish all the missions, side quests, etc. before facing the Seed family members. otherwise, the game is over way too soon.

I also enabled skip intro (AMD, epilepsy, etc.) and start the game at Dutch's bunker, skipping the flight in and the car chase, thus eliminating prime irritants for replaying. I might try a patch that forces Vulkan instead of DX11 later on.

also, it works without issues with my game that I found somewhere, fell off a truck or something, I don't know...

Libreboot support for T480/T480s is here!

Jamie Zawinski's (of Netscape/Mozilla fame, check out Code Rush if you're unfamiliar) humorous but enfuriating take on his club's battle with the music "industry" shakedown.

I mean, come on.

other than changing theme or userChrome any other options?

the transparent hair and beards, I seem to remember there was some antialiasing setting or something that causes this but I can't remember which. naturally, searching the webs is useless. help?

all AMD, wine 9.1, lutris